Patrick Cox: Reclaiming My Life Through Psychedelics

36:07This is because it happened to them, because it happened to them, because it happened to them. It's just passing on intergenerational pain. So it's an eight day intensive psychodrama where they create situations and you have to deal with them. It's quite terrifying dealing with them. And they manipulate your emotions up, down, left, right and everything and strip you right down and then rebuild you by the end. So I did that. and I came out of that and you're not supposed to contact anyone you're not supposed to do all these things when you come out well stupid me I'd flown my mom to be waiting in my house when I got back because I thought I won't be everything will be fine and then so as I'm driving down the driveway of the Hoffman you haven't had your phone I turn on my phone my CEO calls and said we're going into liquidation on Monday my best friend calls me and says I have full-blown AIDS and then my brother calls me for the first time ever and says this letter he'd received from my father blaming everything that happened in childhood on us and my mom so I was like and then I get home and my mom's waiting for me which was a giant mistake to do that and I was just like whoops that was not what I was supposed to do you're supposed to have a soft re-entry and it was the worst re-entry possible.

37:21Patrick I I listened to you talking I mean there's so many things I I didn't know about that either. That happened to you where something good happens to you. And then. Yes. Very quickly. Yes. Yeah. It feels so cruel. Yeah. How do you come to terms with that? Now? Yes. With the new spiritual me? Yes. What I think is everything happened for a reason. This moment talking with you here today is perfect. so everything that happened good or bad happened to get us to arrive at this moment yes takes a long time to get there yes takes a long time to stop what ifing takes a long time to stop blaming takes a long time to stop being angry at my family the world the injustice the fashion system bankers whatever because at the end of the day it doesn't really you can't do anything you have to live in the now you have to because you'll drive yourself insane and i was driving myself insane it's not fair it's this it's that who cares nobody's gonna fix it for you nobody's gonna help you um you just have to go forward and reinvent and you know kind of like a worm wriggling on a hook you're like okay this isn't working that's not working you know you just got to keep trying um until you give up you know i mean i've had two periods of intense suicide aviation in my life that one i'm gonna get to when i got to abita um where i was just like it's over i came up yeah i came up it's just there's just no point anymore i'd be better off god i used to call it exiting i had a euphemism for it and it was totally sane it wasn't i wasn't going to do it in a moment of insanity on high on drugs and everything i was like plan systematic and i'm just gonna exit because there's the laws of diminishing return the future i can see after losing my name was never going to be as glamorous and as fun and everything as i thought my life had been so exit you know like james dean living at his peak maryl monroe living at their peak you No, it was that sort of idea.

39:34It's like, it's just going to be this sad depredation into old age. Just let it go. But I didn't. But did you talk about it at the time to anybody? Or was this something you were going through? Oh, it was a constant refrain. I went from being the happiest, luckiest person to the most miserable motherfucker you ever met in your life. I mean, my friends were on suicide watch. They had a rota and they would call every hour to just make sure I was still alive. And then I, in my flippant way, said, you do know I can kill myself many times in the 59 minutes between your phone calls. They're like, Patrick, we're really trying, man.

40:13You're so hard to deal with. And my constant refrain to anything, how are you? Whatever. How's today? Whatever. I mean, I just said whatever for about six months to everything. And then when I got out of the Hoffman, they recommended a hoffman based therapist and i saw this therapist i have internalized hemophobia i've had problems with myself and body issues and all this sort of stuff and it was this gay leather queen from san francisco and i went whoa i was like they've done this on purpose or thing um and i lasted about six sessions and we won the session he goes you're gonna quit sooner i said uh-huh and he goes how long do i have i said this is our last session and he went right get a dog and i went what he goes get a dog wow he said you have so much love to give you are so desperate for structure and love and you're just in this spiral of self-absorption and negativity get a dog he goes i shouldn't be saying this it's against everything he said but you need something to bring you out of this you need to have a reason to get out of bed every day you know because i had such a structured life yeah i'm so busy all of a sudden I was just laying in bed going nothing you know no appointments phone not ringing you know all of a sudden you know you go from the most fetid person in London to forgotten you know Con Vogue stopped inviting me to parties everyone just did just overnight just stopped um so I ended up getting an English bulldog Caesar um who saved my life I mean some days I wanted to murder him because he needed to be fed he needed to be walked but it took me out of myself and i could give all of this love because i'd broken up with tyler in 97 now we're talking 2007 so i'd already at that point been single for 10 years so i had something to pour my love into and to share my life with and that was i'd always loved animals my whole life as a kid i was going to be a vet um and then i discovered drugs and my clubs and got into fashion but it was the road not taken and we discussed that a few times during the Hoffman like why don't you go back to your original I was like I couldn't go to vet school at 45 but it was that that connection with animals that I really really was missing and I really really needed I think one of the things I really loved about having a dog was that um I really sometimes if it was windy or raining or freezing cold and I'd have to get up early and put my coat on and I think I really can't be arsed like why but you take the dog out and then halfway around on the walk you go wow I would never have come out in this weather but look look at the sky look at the rain look at the streets look how beautiful is all of this but I would never have done this by choice they make you get out if that's the great for me that was the greatest gift of all nature it's make you get off your butt yeah because i would be sitting there smoking pot watching tv and just not doing anything in the basement of my house just for hours and hours days and days and days on poor me poor me poor me this giant giant pity party non-stop i love that expression that they have in aa which is poor me poor me poor me a drink I never really drank.

43:37No, you didn't. Drink was never really my thing, you know, because I so vehemently didn't like my parents as a child. So I never smoked cigarettes. I never drank alcohol. I just went straight to class A's. Yeah. You know, because I didn't. Now I consider myself an adult, but it was only probably in my late 50s where I started calling myself an adult. I still talk about grownups like they're someone else because I've got that eternal teenager living in me. um rebelling um wanting to do things their way discovering their way in the world how did you get to Ibiza so um I limped along after after losing Patrick Cox I had the three-year non-compete and then in the middle of that I opened a cupcake shop as you do I love the name please tell everybody the name so the name was Cox Cookies and Cake love it my friend um his family owned a little bit of Soho and they used to own all the sex magazine stores and everything.

44:35One of them, you know, since people went online and don't need to go to Soho to wank, they can wank at home online. All of those businesses were dying and he was converting into other things. And one of them on Brewer Street opposite his offices was coming up and he said, oh, why don't you open a shoe store there? And why don't you do this? And I said, no, no, no, I don't think Soho is ready for a 500 pound shoe store. I said, but remember that cupcake idea? So cocks means cocks, cookies means balls, and cake means fanny. So to me, it was in an old sex store, and it was dick balls and fanny was basically what I was calling my store to the world.

45:06No one really got that, but it was cocks, cookies, and cake was for that reason. And it was in an old sex store, and we styled it like a sex store. It had neon in it, and the staff were shirtless, wearing studded leather aprons. And we did titty cakes and ass cakes and cock cakes. I mean, this was way ahead of its time when you look at how many cupcake shops there are in London now yeah but it was kind of a cry for help me you know I should have been getting back to shoes but it was just what can I do what can I do and it was a chance for me to try to put my name out there again try to be a designer again but without doing shoes so I designed the store I designed the logo I designed the cupcakes and worked with this with this baker to do the cakes and everything and it was just a test run to get back back in the public yeah it was a huge success we were supposed to open Harrods we're supposed to open Selfridges we had American people coming to ask us to do it.

45:55I was like, don't you have enough cupcakes in America? They're like, not like these. And then I got an offer from this Italian company to return to designing shoes. It sounded like a big, amazing offer. It turned out to not be quite as amazing as I thought it was. So I started to design for them. And I started flying back and forth to Italy. And at one point, I was like, something's got to give here. I can't do this and that. So I let Cox Cookies and Cake close. I closed it because I did not want to sell it. because already I'd lost the name Patrick Cox. I didn't want frickin' Cox cookies and cake stores on every corner and have to deal looking at them considering without me because the Patrick Cox company still exists in Japan and limps along doing hideous things without me that every now and then pop up in my feed and make me go, you know, so I didn't want that.

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47:05And that got me back into being a shoe designer working for this company, very commercial company. And I ended up with all these ideas that I could never give to them because they only wanted commercial things. And so I decided to come back. And my middle name is Lathbridge. It's my great English uncle's last name. So I launched Lathbridge Shoes in about 2014. Well, if I didn't like my career when I was ruling the world, I certainly didn't like it when I was a nobody all over again. And instead of having millions of pairs and having factories and tanneries bow down and do whatever I wanted, I was like reduced to begging and cajoling people to make my shoes again because the whole world had changed and moved on with social media, with the advent of the super brands.

47:49and I was like this so I did this did this did this and then we showed in January 2017 at the Paris fashion shows and I got back and I sat there and I thought I don't want to do this why did I do this I said you know if I can imagine 10 years from now I'm gonna be alone in a field in Italy looking out the window with a cow as I'm drawing a shoe I was like no that this this I have to stop I have to let all that go and do something completely different. So my birthday, March 19th, 2017, I had a party and all my friends were there and I turned off the music. And I said, the house you're standing in is sold and I'm moving to Ibiza.

48:29And everyone looked at each other like, what drug is he on now? And then I moved there September 2017, which was probably a little bit of a mistake to move there with just the winter in front of you and not having lived through the fun of the summer. and winter and ibiza is like therapy um if there's something you don't like about yourself you're gonna have to deal with it and without the constant distractions of london fame success drugs whatever parties and everything the chickens came home to roost and i was like i i kind of had almost a nervous breakdown i guess i was you know suicide suicide suicide suicide side to his side um everything was just dark dark the only thing that saved my life was my dogs because i was trying to figure out how to kill myself but they were still alive so it's like do i drive off a cliff with them in the car do i gas us together i mean it was really that dark that you really were thinking how can we all go together because i can't leave them for anyone else um and then um a friend of mine who i spoke to i spoke about suicide with my mom i spoke about it you know it was just a constant refrain people like oh god and then a friend of mine um made a call and um friends got me off the island and got me into rehab not for drugs i wasn't partying a lot at all at all no it was for depressions suicide ideation and i did 28 days in rehab i hated every second of it really why i fought them every step of the way did you i fought them every step of the way i loved somatics there was equine therapy which again animals i loved equine therapy but the group therapy and everything else it was all based on drugs and alcohol and sex addiction and gambling and there were three of us that were there for depression the other two had never done a drug in their life so they were really hot at least i'd done shit loads of drugs so you know and i kept saying the drugs are the symptoms they're not the cause i can be alone in a room and dead sober and still hate myself i don't need help i'm perfectly capable of doing that i said they're me trying to block out all these feelings when are you going to help me deal with that and they kept going trust the process on day 26 it's like i'm leaving in two days still want to kill myself i was like where is this magic thing gonna happen um was that a scary time because you'd literally thrown everything you know you'd done hoffman you'd done therapy you'd gone to group group therapy that nothing was working the drugs didn't work like nothing yeah were you like okay there is only one option left to me right to take my own life yeah so while i was in there a friend of mine who's buddhist that had known me for 10 years called by luck he didn't know that i was in there uh and i took the call and and he said when you get out he lives in the alps he said you're going to come spend a week with me in the alps and and his um i went and spent a week with him in the alps and that was the beginning of my spirituality we did visualizations we did meditation we did energy work we did all these things and i was just like okay and no drugs oh god no no no nothing nothing nothing you you just changed because people that everybody tried to help you yeah what was it about his approach or what you were doing that made you feel spiritual how did that so the first step in rehab is admitting you're powerless well after i had fought my entire life the one thing that i was not going to ever say was i'm powerless so i had problems with step one i never got past step one i never certainly did the rest of the steps i never got past step one because i was like i would say in the group service if i'm powerless i'm going back to my room and hanging myself now i said because i can't accept that so he said to me he said you are powerful you are unique you're not better than anyone else so you're not feeding your ego because you're not worse than it worse than anyone else but you're powerful and unique and that resonated with me more than anything i'd been told before and said you can do this you have this power in you you are a spiritual be.

52:49He goes, I've known you for 10 years and you've always made fun of it. He goes, and I understand you're anti-religion, but spirituality and religion are two different things. And he, it appealed to me the way he softly, softly approach the way he did it, was really quite amazing. Then I got back to Ibiza, everything was still going wrong. And I was like, now what? That didn't fix anything. You know, I was clinging to this spirituality and this breath work and meditation that he'd given me and visualizations to calm me down when I would start to spiral. And then some of my new friends I met in Ibiza said, you want to try microdosing?

53:25I had tried to do an ayahuasca ceremony before going to rehab, but I was on antidepressants and taking Xanax every day. So they're like, no, you can't, you can't do a ceremony. So by after rehab, I was completely clean. And you know, everything about psychedelics is intention. you know what your intention your intention how you're approaching the ceremony the situation yes the set and setting do you feel safe what is your mindset don't take psychedelics when you're in bad mood don't take psychedelics when you're angry because you're only going to amplify that you know when you're ready you're prepared you feel safe and then what your intention is you know people taking mushrooms and tripping balls and glastonbury and all that sort of stuff and going out to clubs yay for them that's not what i want i want to do deep spiritual work and i normally do it on my own i call it mushroom monday or psychedelic sunday and i'll just sit at home alone and i'll have two grams of mushrooms and just let it all in full my dogs on either side of me in silence and just have the experience let go so when somebody suggested microdosing were you a bit like oh i don't know about well i was like and she goes you don't feel it you know the whole point about microdosing if you feel it you're not microdosing oh you're taking too much yeah because the analogy is it's like taking an aspirin an aspirin you shouldn't feel it it's just working on you yes so it's the same analogy microdosing if you feel it you've taken too much it should work on you on the subliminal level but if you say oh i can't see or this and that then that's not microdosing and so what what were you how do you take how do you it was it was a pipette with um uh diluted lst and i could never really get the dose right so i was like you need to take less than a drop i was like well the pipette does a drop so how do you take less than a drop so i'd put a drop and then i'd flick it and then i do so it was very hidden there sometimes they'd be driving down the road niddily go i mean the road go like oh too much go home and another time it's like so may the next year 2019 um a friend of mine the same great friend who who suggested that I microdose said look there's this practitioner coming in from LA she serves toad she serves bufo do you want to be part of it I didn't even really know what I was saying yes to can I can I quickly ask you toad and bufo is that the same thing yes so it is do you want me to get technical yes yes let me explain it for everybody so it is the the biggest land toad in the Americas it's the Sonoran Desert toad the Sonoran Desert is northern Mexico on the border with the USA the toads actually do exist in california new mexico and arizona also as well as being in this province um they are about five to seven inches across the back and on their shoulders and on their forearms they have peritoidal glands and within those glands is produced uh secretion which has the strongest psychedelic known to man which is 5-m-e-o-d-m-t stronger than dmt right stronger 10 times stronger than dmt 10 times stronger than what you would call dmt which is in ayahuasca.

56:27The toads hibernate 10 months a year underground, and they come up in the summer for an orgy of copulation and eating during the rains, during the summer rains, June, July, August sort of thing. It is now illegal for anyone but non-Indigenous people to touch them because they're being threatened from overpopulation, river diversion, pesticides, and people going out and milking these toads to death. You get a hold of a piece of glass in one hand, you have the toad in the other hand, and you squeeze the gland, kind of like a teenager you're squeezing as it yeah you squeeze the gland and it expresses onto the onto the glass and you put that glass in the sun and it dries into a very thin less than a millimeter thin film of sort of this caramel colored sticky toffee sort of substance um you put that into a pipe vaporize it super high heat it a tiny amount like that big yeah um and it is the life-changing experience um It lasts 10 to 12 minutes.

57:2210 to 12 minutes? 10 to 12 minutes. So normal trip. I remember taking LSD when I was younger. Yeah. That was like, and I had a terrible, terrible, terrible. Oh, LSD 10 to 12 hours. Oh my God. And it was never ending. It was just horrific. The worst thing on psychedelics is when one person in the room goes, when's it going to end? And then the whole room is over. Because it's like, make it so wait, make it end. Oh my God. That's the worst. And I think that really terrified me. I mean, that was happening when I was about 19. So this 15, 20 minutes sounds actually ridiculous. I mean, almost frightening.

58:03Well, yes, it is the strongest psychedelic known to man. I mean, I don't like the word psychedelic because psychedelics has a lot of baggage attached to it. You think of hippies throwing themselves out of windows and everything. And people, when they think of the word psychedelic, even though it is mind changing is what psychedelics mean people think visuals people think hallucinations dmt and then to a lesser degree mushrooms are the most psychedelic visually substance that there is toad bufos you asked me bufalvarius is the latin name of the toad okay so it's a toad it's bufalvarius or it's 5-m-e-o-dmt it's one of the one of those three things you call it and it's all the same thing and it's all the same thing yes there is synthetic as i call pure molecule which was made in a lot of people can make a pure 5 i was gonna say if there's a um a lot of people taking it on of the toads in danger yes that's what i said why non-indigenous people can't touch them or river diversion the toads are threatened and the future will be the pure molecule i don't like using the word synthetic because it instantly put people against it right so you say pure molecule it's exactly the same as the toad makes but it's created but it's created it's actually even easier on you because within the toad venom there are a lot of other alkaloids there's bufatin and a few other things which can make your heart race and have a heavier heavy body load where the pure molecule you're just doing this we do a lot smaller amount because you're just doing that pure amount um purists say you know who's your spirit guide you know it's an anonymous lab in china as opposed to the toad my answer is everything is god you are god i am god this chair is god that glass is god everything is god everything is carbon molecules everything is stardust they're all recycled everything so it's the same you know that is my argument to that and also with the advances into psychedelic medicine and this explosion of psychedelic use these toads are more and more and more endangered and they only exist there in the world you know people see images of people licking toads if you lick one of these toads you'd get very sick to die you can't not ingest it you can only superheat it right where with the 5 meo molecule you can there's lots of applications they can there's a nasal delivery system it can be injected boof up your bum there's all sorts of things you can do which you can't do with the 5 meo from the toad yeah so when you you heard about this woman and she said it's a 15 20 minute thing yeah like you know that might help you what what was your instant thought you like look i'll try anything were you really nervous strangely no well what happened was so rudis had died 2018 2019 on the day that i was going to do my toad ceremony caesar my still living bulldog had 12 epileptic fits in the morning and i had to drop him off at the vet not knowing if he would be alive by the end of the day because we're like we're gonna have to knock him out because we're gonna have to do some tests and he's a 12 year old bulldog and he might not make it so i showed up at the ceremony in hysterics and i just said i don't think i'm gonna do this i mean set and setting yeah talking about i said i don't think i can do this i can do this and she goes patrick what are you gonna do you're gonna go home you're gonna freak out till 5 p.m you're gonna get the phone call your dog is alive or dead she goes why don't you try to do this because you need help and you're a desperate for help and she goes why don't you give us a chance and why don't you take part in this so so i did and i did it we did a smaller amount the first day so I had a beautiful experience but certainly not gone as everyone else was talking and everyone was all together for the debrief at the end of the day and they're all going god god god and I'm like I don't know what y 'all did but I didn't see god it was kind of cool and trippy but you know it has to change my life and they're like he needs to go again so it was a very tight schedule but on the Friday they made room for me at the end of the day and we we did a higher dose than what I'd done and then my whole life changed in that period how yes I mean so was this one day after the other two one day it was a Wednesday and a Friday okay one day off in the middle and were you so because you didn't have a particularly intense experience on the Wednesday were you nervous on the Thursday about going back on the Friday or were you like no I really want to do this i was ready to try it but the doubting you know as you said i've tried so many things that hadn't worked so i was like so we did first i did one hit on the pipe and everything and strangely i sat up within a minute and nothing really happened i don't know how i think i talked myself out at such a degree and then all the walls started to come up then i was like what what am I doing here?

1:02:47These people are insane. What are you doing? This is bullshit. And I really started to build up walls. And the whole point of psychedelic work is to knock down all these walls, but these walls were coming up real fast because you're going in immediately. And so I did another hit on the pipe. So they put it in the pipe. They create the smoke. They present the pipe to your mouth. You do one long, slow, slow, slow, slow inhale. Get as much of the medicine into your lungs as you can then you hold and then you lay your head back you're nine to ten and then you exhale it's like being strapped to the outside of a rocket ship there's an incredible roaring and clicking in your ears everything if you have your eyes open starts to pixelate until you have no vision and it's an incredible feeling of acceleration and expansion Acceleration what?

1:03:38An expansion of what? I don't know. But you feel this. And then you reach this point of maximum expansion. And in that moment, you die. You don't die your body, but it's a 100 % ego death. You cease to exist. But how does that manifest? Can you describe what that feels like? Any other drug experience, there's always subject and observer. you're always like oh look at that i'm hot oh listen to me that sounds funny i'm hot oh look at that they're always you and an inner dialogue and you relating to everything in that moment There is no more you. you become part of a whole sort of like a drop of water being dropped into the ocean all the integral parts of you are still there but they become part of the whole so it's it's very esoteric it's very hard to explain until you've done it but it's a moment of returning to source as i said before all the other experiences are very visual toad is not that visual normally people see pure white light but it's the whitest light you've ever seen in your life.

1:04:47And besides seeing the light, you merge with the light and you become the light. So you are God, not in an egotistical way. You don't come back, I'm God, I'm God, I'm God. But you reach that God consciousness. And I know using the G word is a big one for some people. So if you want to say source, if you want to say Gaia, if you want to say universal consciousness, but you connect with something bigger than yourself and it is so beautiful and it's a feeling of unconditional love that I never really felt other than being with my animals let's say and it's a place of acceptance um I call it like a psychic reboot like unplugging a tv and plugging it back in so you unplug you you die and in that moment all of the conditioning all the stories you've told yourself and everyone's told you you're fat you're stupid you're useless you're worthless you're this all of it drops away and you see yourself as you truly are a perfect i get emotional a perfect light being um and it's it's unforgettable you know it's it's fundamental it changes you changes you on a molecular level changes on the dna level it's it's something that you hold that moment forever, ever, forever in your life.

1:06:07You can't unsee it. You can't undo it. It's, it's there and it, it's a feeling of connection. You know, you feel connected to nature. You feel connected to all the people around you. You realize that you are all one. So everything that happened was in my family. I love them. Everything that was happening on this island. I love this island. everything that happened you know you have to get to the point you know if you do really deep work with non-duality it's like love the rapist love the this there is no evil not quite there sometimes you know um but you you get to a point where it's just unconditional accepting love and i you know i'd studied physics and chemistry biology so you know i thought well when you split down you split down you split down but what is there when you split down everything to everything love love is the unifying force of our world, of everything out there.

1:07:05My idea of God isn't a man by any means. It's not a force that we can appeal to. I don't think prayer is valid. I think it's a benign force. It's somewhere we came from and a place we will return to, but it doesn't play a role in our earthly life, we have to decide to do that. It's not like if you're bad, you go to hell. And if you're good, you know, all of that Catholic and all that sort of stuff. It's not that. It's, yeah. So I get really emotional. You can see I'm all sitting up and everything. It's just so beautiful. It's so, so, so beautiful. And I sat up. The experience lasted, I guess, 12, 15 minutes.

1:07:49And I sat up. and I was just I mean I called the beef of this motherfucking rock in the fucking Mediterranean why the fuck did I move it I hated myself I hated the island I hated everything and I was just full of love and and gratitude you know when people write hashtag gratitude on Instagram or hashtag blessed it's like what the hell are they so grateful for and all of a sudden I was just so happy to be alive to be in this spot in this moment in this time and I went back to my house and I hated my house and I jumped in the pool naked and I called friends and I said I love everything and they're like you're high i went no i'm not i think i was a few hours ago and that was five years ago and it hasn't changed i'm not mad i have good moments and bad moments to to want to live in a state of happiness all day long is the definition of insanity yes but to want to be able to return to a place of peace to want to be able to live in peace to not have those constant recriminations that constant self-judgment those i mean i didn't have an inner dialogue i had an inner bully just constantly telling me you're worthless you're worthless you're worthless and he shut up i mean i sat up after the ceremony and i was breathing really funny and they're like you okay and i said my lungs are bigger my heart is bigger i said there's been a weight on my chest for 54 years and it's been removed and i can go when i never ever could it was short press yeah and i said i'm fight or flight yeah i was stuck in fighter flag mode i mean they analyzed the way i stood i stood on my toes i leaned forward because i was always ready to run and they said lean back and i stood on my heels i stood on the ground i was just like this is amazing you know um you were talking about it dying is is part of the journey of toad to let go so completely let go right but what's really interesting is how you'd spent so much of your life not wanting to be here but part of your journey to recover did involve realizing how beautiful life was but did involve it in in a trip dying yeah that to let to really let go but then to still be alive yeah and to be able to come back into yourself scientists saved you that ego death moment is where the reset happens right you know someone very smart i can't remember the name said microdosing is to manage a problem big dose experiences are to fix the problem with microdosing you're just gonna like the antidepressants i'm a little bit happier a little bit this but you're not getting to the root of things but with the big dose the ego death that moment of transcendence then you're getting to the root of things what's hard i think for people watching that haven't had maybe even any experience of psychedelics is to understand that all of that can happen in 12 minutes yeah what i mean are you aware of the shortness of time when you're in it or is it no you you don't exist so there is no sense of time and space you know you come back and you think how many hours was that like 12 minutes you know you don't it's it's very hard because you know someone comes back to recording and saying all these things i wouldn't think they broke through because like well who's doing the recording and what are you looking at if you were everything and everything is nothing what what are you looking at you know um it it's not a panacea you know the peak experience is the peak experience but it's what you do in the days and weeks and months following that's the work that's ceremony what's that called integration so how do you integrate you have to take the experience and make it work in your non-tripping your non-journeying life you have to take those moments take the lessons take the downloads that you were exposed to that you were taught that you were in that moment and figure out how you're going to translate that into your everyday life you know people can have the experience and then go right back to their old life if they want to you know i don't know how they do but but what my teacher said to me was you really are here for healing so i have no choice i'll be dead you know my teacher is was um well we'll get to that yes Yes.

1:12:06You know, you had to, you have to, you have to absorb it and you have to sit with it and you have to think about it. A common thing when people come back is to instantly start blabbering. And it's their ego trying to make sense of this experience that was so huge. And the ego went offline and it doesn't want to go offline because it's to save you and protect you. But it actually ends up limiting you. You know, I'd created this perfect wall around myself of nothing would get in because everything that ever came near me failed and didn't work anyway. and I had to just break down those walls and then keep them down.

1:12:39You know, the job isn't to destroy your ego. The job is to become friends with your ego and embrace your ego, but not let it run your life. And being in fashion, my life was lived in ego. You know, everything was about Patrick Cox, Patrick Cox and fame and celebrity and this and, you know, the figurehead of the company and all the rest of it. And I had to let that go. I had to let that person and all that sadness and all that success die. And start again. And that is the work. I like you calling it the work. Yeah. And I've heard you call it medicine. Yeah. These are all words that we use within the community.

1:13:17People within the community, they don't call psychedelics drugs. They call them the medicine. I've been made fun of by people. It sounds like you're just sitting around taking drugs, Patrick. And I'm like, go ahead. If you think that, if you want to, I don't care. I don't really care what anyone thinks. I know what I'm doing sounds insane, but it works. and it's it's changed my life and it's changed so many people's lives around me you know because in the beginning obviously everyone thought I was mad and all my friends were like uh-oh and now I'd say probably 60 70 percent of my friends have done it not because I preached about it but because they would say whatever you did yeah couldn't we try that because you changed a friend of mine said something really good he goes you changed the channel you went from black and white to color yeah you re-found your joy you were just so i mean i used to go and all of a sudden i looked up and i went was the sky always this blue yeah were the trees always this green i never noticed because i was just in this gray shroud of defeated and misery and negativity and then i just decided no i'm gonna live it's a fraction yeah rather than promotion yeah isn't it yeah people go look what happened to Patrick look what happened so after the peak experience after that she left went back to Los Angeles I had a follow up phone call a week later and she said you need I said is it bad all I do is think about Bufo all I do is think about the experience I need to go again and she said you need to go again I recommend you go for once a month until you feel healed but this was the hippie part that made me go completely bad You can't go looking for the medicine.

1:14:59The medicine will present itself. And I went, oh, my God, what the hell does that mean? I've never heard of a substance. I said, I don't want to ask for it, but I need it. But I got to look for it, but I'm not allowed to. Anyway, the week later, I went to a gay pool party, which is something I would never in my life go to. But it was someone from London was over. And they said, I came over wearing a caftan to the ground. You can see me from here up. I even had shoes on. And I had my dog Caesar with me because he was still alive. because Bruce had died. I never went anywhere without Caesar. And I'm shaking hands with the man at a party like this.

1:15:30And my sleeve rolled up and he saw the name Caesar. And he went, ah, Caesar. And I went, yeah. And then he pulled up his sleeve and he had Caesar written that big on his arm. And he said, why do you have Caesar on your arm? And I said, because of my bulldog Caesar. And he went, and he ran away. And he came back with this beautiful Colombian man, bald head, beautiful, gorgeous smile. And that was his husband, Cesar. Caesar. Cesar, his bulldog had died a few weeks before that looked just like Caesar. So I'm standing here on the lawn next to the pool and everything. And Hans was his name, he said, and pointed at the dog.

1:16:09Cesar just threw himself on the ground and started hugging my dog and crying and hugging him. So we scooted off and started talking on the lawn. And it was the usual be the conversation, how long you've been here. And I said, well, I hated everything. I hated life. I hated myself. I said, but I did this thing called Boofer last week and everything is better now and he went and he had this smile i said why are you smiling about like that he goes i serve buffo what exactly and i'd never believed in universe and all and i just looked up i went thank you and that was it um wait that's so nuts how long after two two one week after was the phone call two weeks i mean oh my two weeks after two weeks after you know have you ever read synchronicity yes i've just started reading it i feel like i've got to an age now where i can't deny the fact that yeah people say it's coincidence shit happens and i'm like okay i don't think that's just happened by luck yeah it's so specific it is the caesar the dog caesar his name is just too many things my house in the beef is called can caesar because you know i named it after my dog and everything so it was just everything was caesar caesar caesar everywhere um so i said i'd really like to do a ceremony and we did a ceremony together and it was absolutely beautiful and then we started to do a series of once a month of ceremonies and before every ceremony you set an intention you say what you want to work on and i kept saying i'm stuck i need to know what to do next um there's this famous saying life is in two acts and it's all about surviving the intermission well i was stuck on the motherfucking intermission i could not get I've never seen that before.

1:17:47That's so good. I don't know who said it. I've Googled it. I can't find it anywhere. But someone said it to me. So good. Yeah. So I was stuck on the intermission. I couldn't imagine what I would be other than Patrick Cox, that Patrick Cox was dead. What was next? And after listening to me say this, I think for six months of ceremonies, he just said, maybe this is what's next. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, I've seen you, Patrick. People talk about shoes and fashion. You run out of the room. Yeah. And he said, but when people talk about wellness, mental health, psychedelics, transformation, he goes, you're all in.

1:18:22And he said, and you do the work. You are here to really change your life. You know, some people I serve and I think they're not really here to do that. They're here to get high or whatever. He said, but you are really doing the work. And then he asked me, would you be my apprentice? And I went, wait, what? I said, no, I'm a gay cobbler. I said, it's just like that's so cliche. someone moving to Ibiza and changing their name to Ashanti. I said, you know, no, no, no, thank you, but no. And he said, why are you making fun of this? Why are you doubting this? He goes, you're a spiritual being. He said, you've seen.

1:18:57He goes, you've gone deeper than so many of my clients. He said, this is what I'd like you to do. He knew he was dying. We didn't know at the time, but he'd had pancreatic cancer for several years by that point. And he'd been healing himself through his work with the medicine. So I worked with him for a couple of years and then very sadly, December 2021, he left his earthly body. He succumbed. So when he asked you to work with him, you didn't know that he was dying? No, I had no clue. He wanted to pass on? Yeah. He said, would you continue my lineage? Wow. Would you do this for me? When did you find out that he was dying?

1:19:40baddy well he was hospitalized about a year before but then he came back out but he died in december from august to december he didn't really leave the hospital and he just got more and more and more and more and more ill um and i became his medicine man i mean i visited well yeah yeah it was a lot um he never said he was sick you know we're we're working on i'm working on a documentary called My Road to Toad. And initially the meetings with the producer and the director were with Cesar. And it was going to be a buddy movie. It was going to be me and him and how he'd fixed me and changed my life and all this sort of thing and how the medicine had helped and everything.

1:20:21And the day before he died, you know, and he was like a cadaver, he was like, you know, reduced to I don't know how many kilos and everything like that. He said, we're going to go to Mexico and we're going to have so many beautiful experiences. And, you know, I just looked at him. I knew he wouldn't be alive the next day, the day he died. I mean, I knew. He was just hanging on by nothing. And I whispered in his ear, you can go. You can go on the last day. And then he passed away at like one in the morning when no one was in the room. He wouldn't die when there was someone in the room. His mother was sitting on one side and his husband on the other.

1:20:53And they finally left, constant vigil. And then he died in the middle of the night. And no one knew because he didn't tell anybody. there his husband asked me to take over his instagram feed and do a post and everyone's like he didn't even know he was sick i mean he just he didn't want pity he just wanted you know positivity around him i remember like the last week he was alive it looked like christ on the cross he was holding his mom's hand on his side his husband's hide on this side mom and the husband were fighting and he was just laying there and i came in and i would cry in the car get it all out and then be like up.

1:21:29And I'd come in and go and he was like, oh, thank God someone happy. And I would, when I could, when he was well enough, I'd wheel him outside and we'd smoke a joint. And then do you know what Rappé is? Is that the tobacco stuff? Yeah, so Rappé is, it's a tobacco product. There's no psychoactive ingredient to it at all, but it's from the Amazonian rainforest and it's very finely ground up tobacco with ashes from the eternal fire and various medicinal herbs. And you blow it up each nose. So every day in a hospital, I would give him some rapé. So I became his medicine man for the last few months of his life.

1:22:01And the nurses would walk by and they're like, your friend's dying. You can do what you want. You don't need to hide it. You can see what you're doing. It doesn't matter. Your friend's dying. Your friend's dying. So that was an incredible honor to be able to serve him at the end like that. And then I got very angry at everything because I was like, he was a saint. And if there is a spirituality, why would you take him? And then I got really angry. And then I said I wasn't going to do bouffo anymore. And I certainly wasn't going to serve it. And then his husband's like, he left you everything in his will.

1:22:38He's like, not money or anything, but the accoutrement, the sand bowl, the rappy pie. Oh, how lovely. The toad out of stone. I mean, all this sort of stuff for ceremony. His ceremonial sash, the grand shaman from the village where the toads live in that area, the Kamkak people in the desert in Mexico. he left me all these things and I was just like what do I do with this what do I do with this so I found someone that he had served Bufo to that served Bufo and I had a ceremony with him and the first thing I saw was his art going get off your ass what are you doing um you know there's work to be done and that was um that was the beginning of that that phase of my life complete change complete change um like is that what you do sort of i mean how often would you help people probably once a week probably once a week i'd um you know cesar that's what he did so you know he would be doing like four or five ceremony a day or something like that he would go from ceremony ceremony and he also served cambo which i've never got involved with what's that Cambo is from an Amazonian tree frog, as opposed to being from a land toad.

1:23:52And it is another venom, but it's a purgative. It's a purifier. It's not psychoactive at all. They take an incense stick and they burn you. Each burn is called a gate. And then to that little burn, they apply the toad, the frog venom, and then they add a drop of water. And within 10 seconds, your whole body goes red and there's an intense feeling of heat. and then it's a purgative. You can't do... What, like being sick? Yeah. I mean, remember in Little Britain, they go, ah, it's like that. So you have to drink at least three liters of water before you take tempo because it's all going to come up.

1:24:28And you get rid of, they say, heavy metals in your body. I forgot how many alkaloids and peptides there are within the actual chemical secretion, but they're being studied by scientists all over the world for all sorts of properties. But it's purifying and purging. What? and resetting i mean that obviously would make sense for getting rid of poisons or toxins or something like a heavy metal poisoning but what what are the kind of changes that you've seen in people that have come to you do they report back after their experience oh god yes i call these people my tone tribe they're they're my friends forever because we've shared the most incredible experience i mean when someone re comes back into their body comes back into this dimension whatever you want to say and they open their eyes it's it's just such a beautiful beautiful beautiful moment they're so full of love and life and gratitude the classic thing is they thank me and you know this is not a cult of personality i am not a shaman i am not this i was like thank yourself you did this for yourself yeah pat yourself on the back you've been so brave you've It's so amazing.

1:25:37I am just here as a witness creating a safe space for you. But you did this. You know, I always say to people, you heal yourself. The toad is a modem. I'm here watching. But you are doing this work on yourself. You are doing this for you. This is the ultimate presence for yourself. I mean, it's amazing for PTSD. It's amazing for grief. I mean, the amount of people I've sat with that saw their partner, their mother, their father, their child that passed away. I got to have a few moments with them, some sort of closure. I mean, it's so, so, so beautiful. I saw my dog Caesar on one time. Caesar said, why don't you concentrate on Caesar?

1:26:18And it was just the most beautiful, beautiful moment with him saying, it's okay, daddy. I'm in a place where there is no time. And all the animals I'd ever owned in my life were all around him. We're just waiting for you sort of thing.

1:26:38yeah it's it's undescribable i could wax lyrically about it forever but it's um it's a knowing you know i i served my buddhist friend who started this whole process with me he said i i need to do this he said you are achieving states of consciousness that people who've been meditating for 30 years is going to flash of for 10 seconds it's called samadhi samadhi um where it's you just transcend and so he came and he did it oh did he yeah oh my god that's amazing it was so amazing so he started your journey he started and you and then he came back and he said i love he went back to his buddhist community and they're all like you're different you're changed and he said i always believed but now i know he said there was a knowing to it that he never had before because it's a human doubt or what yes or maybe or you know whatever but it it it absolutely changes his buddhism buddhism practice completely his meditation practice completely changed um you just become a kinder more compassionate person more empathetic person you know alpha males tend to have a rough time because they think surrendering is weak oh yes letting go is bad right because your number one job on the day is to surrender and let go if you don't you can have a bumpy ride the medicine will win and you might you know some people scream in terror and things like that they get there in the end but you know sometimes there can be things that you have to go through and it's all about moving energy it's all energetic work and you know you have to go a few times in a row to shed your inhibition shed your inhibition and get to the place that you're ready to actually let go and that might not happen on the first time like it didn't happen with me on the first time it might happen the second third time um but each step is a step closer i always say each learning each dose opens a door and you walk through that door and then there's the next door the next door and then eventually you get to that state i mean as a as a um an ex you know heroin addict i um would you know obviously cocaine and heroin that i know are super super addictive um but i i when i took lsd when i was 19 or whatever i was like well there's no way i want to do that again for ages you know it's not it wasn't a particularly enjoyable thing is there anything that could be addictive around no psychedelics that you know psychedelics are not addictive and most of them it's diminishing returns so if you do mushrooms four days in a row by the fourth day you can eat a handful i mean they just stop working doesn't work and also interesting it's not the most pleasant experience it's work you know and and you're nervous and you're scared i mean i'll still be shaking before ceremony for myself not taking care of someone else um because it's a really big deal my teacher said cesar said the goal is to never use the medicine again the goal is you will achieve these states of consciousness on your own.

1:29:45You don't need the medicine. Are you there? I probably go about three, four times a year. Okay, so that's a lot less than once a month. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, that's extreme. What I was doing was extreme and because I was teaching and everything, I would say, general rule of thumb is, you know, insert, but I would think someone doing it once a year was plenty. You know, if someone really had a problem, maybe, you know, twice a year, but, you know, really, because if they're not integrating, then they're just, they can create other problems. Right. Whether it's a faux spirituality and they're becoming addicted and their ego gets amplified rather than pushed down.

1:30:22So there are dangers of that with people abusing and things like that. But it's not an addiction. It's definitely not an addiction. It's not recreational. You cannot do this on your own. No, and it's not something you would do and go out. No, no, no. I mean, you can't. You're gone. Your body is laying there. You are, you know. You can't walk. You can't walk. You can't talk. There is no way to do this other than a safe ceremonial situation. There is no way to just casually pass this to someone. Yes. Because they'd be, boom, you know, sort of thing. And it's unsafe. You can't have alcohol in your system.

1:30:56You have to be clean from drugs. You know, there are whole protocols. You know, before someone starts to do the work, there's a whole intake of questions asking, first question, why do you want to do this? And if someone's like, it's on my bucket list, like bungee jumping, I'm like, get out. you know there has to be a real real reason and then another question is are you ready for everything in your life to change everything and if you're not ready don't do this do something else yes other than do you have psychedelic experience don't start with toad right that's diving in the deep end i would say get some mushrooms have a trip sitter have someone you know and start small and build and see if you can navigate that psychedelic space and see where that takes you but don't start with this no and you know it's not going to be for 99.9 % of the world because it is very you know out there but it is it does have a lot of applications for psychiatric work and science because of the way you can do it this is what I love about you because you are actively taking part in research now aren't you to help kind of advance yes scientific So Dr.

1:32:05David Nutt was on your show. Yes. And he's one of my psychedelic heroes. Yes. And I very amazingly got to share a stage with him talking about psychedelics a couple of months ago. Yes, I came. Yeah, in London. And so I took part in the first UK 5-MeO-DNT study at Imperial College London, where I was given the pure molecule, obviously not the toad venom, all monitored up. It's pure science they're doing. It's pure brain mapping. I mean, there are other people doing applications for commercial uses, for PTSD, for addiction, for all sorts of things. But this is just pure science. And it was it was an amazing experience.

1:32:41I was honored to be part of it. Yeah. What's your wish for the future, do you think, for psychedelics? And I mean, I feel like there is a huge wave towards trying to understand psychedelics and their effects and the benefits that they can have on people, particularly around depression and what you went through and how it's changed your life. And that it's classified. I mean, mushrooms are classified, I think, as a class A drug. It's a plant that grows the ground. Yeah, when it is something that seems to have such enormous benefits. We've talked about it quite a lot on this podcast, and I'm super fascinated by where it's going to go.

1:33:25What do you think it's going to look like? If I can do anything to normalize the conversation, if I can use my remaining infamy celebrity to talk about this, that's why I did it. I remember when I did my psychedelic coming out article in The Guardian three years ago, and one of my best friends said, oh my God, what are you doing? You were the shoe guy, now you're the toad guy forever. And I was like, the shoe guy's dead, baby. I said, if I can help someone, if someone can go, wow, that might help me and get in touch with someone and somehow do something and save their life, like Cesar saved my life.

1:34:00That's what the goal is. I think, you know, the conversation around mental health, people shouldn't be ashamed anymore. It's a fact, it happens. And other modems, because just popping antidepressants isn't working. It's not working. It might be keeping the pharmacology business alive, but it's not working. But it's a bit like microdosing, isn't it? Yeah. Putting a plaster on the issue, whereas something deeper might actually solve. Yeah. My mom is starting to suffer from depression because she's very old and her partner is full senile and has been taken away in the home and everything. And I was on a family phone call and they were all trying to get my mom on antidepressants.

1:34:37And I was like, why don't we get her to try microdosing some mushrooms? and they're like shut up Patrick and I was like look instead of suppressing her sadness why don't we help her find joy yes that to me is so much more positive than just beating down the sadness when leveling out your emotions I am also loved what what this journey has done for your creativity as well as well I mean we've got to talk about your top it's so amazing and I know that top well because I've got one myself in red. I just wanted to let you know. Well, ta-da! Oh, my God! Oh, no, wait, middle eye. Stop it. This one's mega.

1:35:23Beautiful, though. Oh, my God, it's like Rainbow My Little Pony. That one is actually an old Biba design. Is it? These two are from 1950 makeup books. Some of them are from a cult. Some of them are from religious. Some of them are from all sorts of symbolism. Wait, and also can we just discuss this? So it's based on a Tibetan prayer flag and a little bit of the yellow submarine and a little bit of Jefferson Airplane sort of all mixed in together. This is what I love about you is that your cookie shop, where everything was designed, you go the extra mile, but I felt like you fell out of love with fashion, design, everything.

1:36:04yeah you're like no more thanks for this Patrick you're welcome um um and how did you rediscover the love well Cesar on his deathbed said to me Patrick you are a creative being in order for you to be truly happy you need to reconnect with your creativity yes because he never saw doors of perception he never saw any of it it all happened after it all happened after he died I never got to give him a sweatshirt and never got to give him anything and he would have loved it but he just said to me you are a creative being you need to reconnect or you will never be truly happy and so i designed this one sweatshirt the first one was in black it was this sweatshirt there are 40 eyes 20 colors of thread it takes 40 hours to machine embroider this thing um i did it with someone and then i sat on it for about a year because i was so scared because i was like i don't know what to do i don't know what to do i can't fashion judgment right being in that milieu again where I'd been so ingloriously spat out um so I didn't want to do it I didn't want to do it and then um I met this woman in Ibiza that could do this embroidery I went to the hippie market and her name is Nieves and she has a stall there when she does embroidered cushions and I showed her the sample that I'd made with this embroider in England and she was like oh I can do that I can do that and she said but you need to order 80 because we need to pay for the CAD cams and all the embroidery programs and everything.

1:37:26I was like, okay. And so I had my 80. I was still sitting on it. I had it like three weeks before Christmas, 2022. I called a couple of friends. I said, I'm going to launch this thing. I'm thinking about doing it in February. And they're like, have you ever heard of this thing called Christmas? They said, if you launch today and you deliver by the 25th, I'll take three. If you deliver by the 27th, I'll take one. And I'm like, oh, shit. So I just, the website was all designed and everything. I just hit go. And we started to sell a little. and I spend every Christmas with my best girlfriend, Elizabeth Hurley.

1:37:57She's like my family. Her son, Damien, is like my honorary godson. And, you know, that's my team. And so on Christmas Day, I gave her a white one. And they do Christmas presents after lunch, not in the morning. And so she said, one minute. She calls me Poison. She goes, one minute. She ran upstairs with Damien. She came back there. She goes, here, post that. And it was a picture of her wearing just that, nothing else. It was down to about here. It was just taken against the wall in her bedroom. No fancy lighting, nothing. It was just a snap. And I went from, I think, 40 followers to 800 followers over the 25th, 26th, 27th.

1:38:30Because everybody's at home. Everybody's bored. Everybody's on their phone. There's a fucking beautiful picture of Elizabeth Hurley. And I was launched. And that was it. And the name? The name is from the famous Aldous Huxley book, The Doors of Perception. It was a book written while he was under the influences of Mescaline. And he talks about the doors of perception in your mind. And to me, it all made sense. I didn't want the name Patrick Cox on anything. But if you see on that giant label, it does say designed by Patrick Cox as one of the things. To me, if you just think it's a cool sweatshirt, yay.

1:39:05If you feel there's something special about it and you want to go a little bit deeper and you want to read about it, the new word for psychedelics is entheogen. And entheogen comes from the Greek to reveal the God within. Oh, really? Yeah. And so I call it entheogenic apparel. I call it consciousness raising clothing it's just something special that's a little bit different it's not by a big brand it's sustainably produced it's just a different series of things they're beautiful motifs all embroidered in Ibiza and if you want to go a little bit deeper you can understand where it came from and it's just celebrating that and trying to normalize the conversation around it yeah I mean I feel like meeting that woman going to Ibiza, meeting that woman Caesar all of that led you to purpose this has given you a purpose to help people and it's got meaning I'm happier now than I ever was without substances yes and I'm not hurting anyone I'm not hurting myself I'm helping people I'm making something beautiful I I want to spread joy I want to spread beauty I think I became a designer because I have an eye for beauty um and I want happiness around me um I don't want to live in misery I don't want to live in all those places that you know places that I've been come out of um and so if I can do anything that furthers that then that's what it's all about to me I want to just quickly touch on because you are that the like epitome of begin again I mean you've just done it a thousand times right we've heard we've heard about numerous times now but this year feels like it's been a particularly taxing year for you already yeah and it's like it's um it's punishing you in a way this year are you are you all right to talk about your dad yeah and what happened at the end yeah yeah um so basically when he was gone he was from when he moved to Canada I did not see him till I turned 16 really yeah nothing any contact?

1:41:14My mom wanted us to have a relationship with my dad so she never insulted my dad to me so she wanted us to have a relationship with my dad but he's an emotional cripple. He just died a couple months ago. We got some resolution a little bit but he's an emotional cripple because of his childhood and it's intergenerational. He's passed it down to me and that's what you have to learn. Learn I'm going to be the end of this cycle. You know what happened was what happened but I'm going to stop it. So I hadn't spoken to my dad in 15 years or something like that. And as I told you, I hadn't spoken to my brother in a long time.

1:41:52So through my work with the medicine, I realized that by hating them, I was hating myself. I am you. You are me. We are one. So I reached out to my brother a couple of years ago, and he has since visited me. And since we have a relationship now, he has done some bufo. He's working on himself too. My youngest brother, the one straight brother I have, he came and saw me. We worked on things with him in his life. It's really been a beautiful family feeling that I could reconnect with them, people. Because most people thought I was an only child and an orphan because I never talked about my family and nobody knew I had three other brothers.

1:42:25Well, I've actually got five other brothers because my stepdad had two kids too. So there were six boys on the weekends back in the 70s and early 80s when I was at home. So I've reconnected with all that. But my dad and I never really got further than the odd phone call. But I hadn't spoken to him at all in about 15 years. And last year on my birthday, we had our first phone call in about 15 years. Video phone call. It was a lot. It was a lot. You know, I don't think he understood. You know, because you have to meet people where they are. Just because you've done all this work on yourself doesn't mean they have.

1:43:01They're still the person they were. and you can't judge them and you can't revert to hating them or you know being triggered into all the emotions that you had before so you have to learn a serenity um a way of meeting them where they are just saying you know i love you dad you know sort of thing so um that that was a big deal and we'd started talking and we'd started emailing for some reason doesn't believe in smartphones so there was no whatsapp and there was no social media i kept going just go on instagram don't do that it was all right fine so we're emailing and then um i got an email out of the blue the second week of january from my half sister his daughter who i've met three four times in my life maybe i haven't seen her in probably 20 years and she just said dad's committing suicide on the 28th of january you might want to reach out to him i was like wait what and in canada it's legal it's called maids medically assistance in dying service or something like that and she wrote that in the email but i didn't understand what maids meant i was like what the um and then i sort of wrote back i said does he know you're telling me and she said no he's gave me specific instructions that the boys me and my brother weren't to know and i'm like he just brought up all the feelings of anger and what the fuck is this and blindsided me i was like wow i didn't have my dad committing suicide on you know the first weeks of of 2025 on my on my game card I was like wow um so I wrote him a heartfelt email slightly reprimanding him just saying you know this could have been handled a little bit better but I totally support your decision you don't want to live anymore you're 90 your quality of life isn't what it was and everything but you know and he said I didn't you answered I didn't want your pity and I went how about my love and my forgiveness and you know i have to forgive him but my my love you know and a chance to say goodbye so three days before he went in and ended his life um we had a phone call um which was really intense and beautiful

1:45:12um

1:45:17yeah i said i said i loved him he loved me and that was goodbye and he was like I wish you could be here to give me a hug and I was like motherfuckers you should have handled this a little bit differently you know I would have been there to say goodbye so that happened sorry which was intense I'm not what I imagined and it was weird because I'd hated him for almost my entire life and it was weird to realize how much i was gonna miss and he was 90 he was gonna die he was gonna die anyway but it was just the way it all played out um but i got to say i love you and i didn't bother saying i forgive you because that's insulting because he'd be like for what you know sort of thing you know because because they have their own reality you know they they they don't realize what they did wrong um so uh that was very very intense it was beautiful it kind of shook me we spoke and everything um but i'm so glad that we had that moment and i'm so glad that i'd reached out and as i said at the beginning it's all about breaking that curse of intergenerational pain um and maybe one of the reasons why i don't have children that's now gay people can have children too is because i still see elements within myself that i want to stop i don't want to pass on even with all the work i've done myself i just think this line let's say this line is cursed or anything but i want i want to stop with me it's going to stop with me actively and that i'm going to engage with people with love but it's also going to stop with me so that was um that was a big moment what what did it feel like for you after he had gone I remember when my mother died um I'd spent so long um being being angry with her in my life that there was almost a feeling of letting go when she went but but you'd had a different experience because you'd you'd sort of managed to connect yeah on his deathbed how did it feel the fact the way he handled the last few days did trigger like oh my god we're talking and you're still not you know you're still emotionally dead sort of thing um this is going to sound horrible relief yeah that's how i because i can't hurt me anymore yeah you can't disappoint me anymore you can't hit me anymore he hasn't been able to hit me for a long time but you can't hurt me anymore and that's a horrible thing to say to yourself and you're riddled with guilt um i mean it's less than two months ago it's less than 60 days ago so i guess i'm still thinking about it and things like that i remember when the half moon they asked you to prosecute your parents and wonder you're supposed to prosecute your dad and i just sat there and i'm like what i said i don't know i'm not mad at him and they're like think of the child that you could have had if you'd had a loving and supporting father and then i was like and they're like there you go work on that because i did but you know it is what it is again like i said this moment is perfect so whatever happened before and it's funny how him like leaving you permanently has happened at the beginning of this year there's something about loss that leaves a space for something but you've you said that very kindly you said that maybe it's creating space for something well the disaster last week but that's what i was going to bring up as well yeah you know there was obviously the fire yeah um just so everybody so on today is monday monday so on thursday the lovely family run atelier that does all my embroidery burned to the ground um in ibiza overnight in a fire electrical fire in the wall and they've lost everything they've lost they've been in that building since 1970s their her mother founded the embroidery business whatever and the machines are so expensive i mean design everything i've lost my entire spring production because we're about to start delivering to stores on the island and on my website and things like that um and i really that shook my spirituality i would have taken you that the thursday was not a good day i spoke to you thursday was not a good day because i was like what the fuck you know but you go on you go on you know you go on it's it's um it's a setback it certainly wasn't expected it certainly wasn't desired i don't really think it's the universe teaching me a lesson because i don't really think there was a lesson that anyone needed to learn here um but i'm a survivor um I just get up and keep going.

1:50:17I moan, I complain, I drive my friends insane, but I'm still alive. And I do believe, you know, something amazing is just around the corner. I'm leaving Ibiza. I'm moving to Italy. I want to open an animal rescue center. I'll continue to do doors of reception. And I think the future is rosy, you know. um patrick this has been a joy really because um obviously i have such a personal love for you and you knew me before i was famous you knew me when i hated myself and was looking for a way out and look at us we've come full circle we're still friends you mean so much to me but you have been And this has been such an amazing chat just because I love discovering a little bit more about you.

1:51:15But also you are the king of reinvention. Not reinvention, really. It's about rebirth, rebirthing yourself. Change is scary. Yeah. Change is good. It is. And you need to do it. Yeah. You know, we're allowed to change from the age of 5 to 15, from 15 to 25, 15 to 35. and then we're supposed to ossify and become the same person for the rest of our life. Yeah. Fuck that. Yeah. You know, I made a giant leap of faith and moved to Ibiza at the age of 50-something. I've launched Doors of Perception at the age of 59. Yes. You know, I'm going to move to Sicily now at the age of 62. And it's never too late.

1:51:51It's never too late. It's never too late. Find what makes you happy. And do it. Find what makes you feel safe. Find, you know, get out of your comfort zone. otherwise what you just the slow decline till eventual death i mean you know death is inevitable for all of us but live your life to the fullest is you know what i'm trying to do you are aspiring to do you're doing it you're living it i love you i love you baby thank you so much thank you thank you i think that was one of my favorite chats i've ever had with patrick that was absolutely amazing I don't even know how long it was but it felt like it was 20 minutes it went so fast there was so much to take away from that but I did love it when he said life is in two parts don't get stuck in the intermission and that is so true I also love that he talked about it is impossible to be happy all the time.

1:52:57And what he was seeking was peace. And I feel like he found it. And it doesn't matter what life throws at him. He finds a way through and learns from it. And I really admire that. And he shared all of those learnings with us today. It was incredible. I hope you got something from it too. Do you run your own business? Are you looking to hire more people? Well, if you answered yes to both of those questions, just want to say well done, boss ladies and boss gents. Keep chasing your dreams. I have been there myself and I know how much goes into building and growing a team. And it is brilliant fun and it's scary, but it is really worth it.

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